Mercury News interview: PayPal's Laura Chambers

Talk about mobile! As the PayPal senior director leading the e-commerce giant's charge into on-the-go mobile payments, Laura Chambers has been on the go her whole life, from growing up in Australia to coming to the United States for college to heading to London for eBay, then circling back to Silicon Valley.

Chambers says that even though her company, now owned by eBay, has been around more than a decade, mobile payments are really coming into their own this holiday season.

We spoke with her recently about her leadership role in one of the most cutting-edge tech businesses in the valley and how mobile payments are changing the shopping experience and even the future of money. Her comments have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Q Can you give us a brief history of the evolution of mobile payments over the past few years?

A PayPal actually started in 1998 as a mobile payments company. In fact, the initial plan was to beam money back and forth on Palm Pilots. We were definitely ahead of our time. At that time, mobile payment was pretty much oriented around text; it had some traction but was pretty limited. It's the growth of smartphones with more open platforms that has really created a seismic shift in this area.

When the iPhone opened up to outside developers in 2008, PayPal was there at launch with a mobile app. We saw $25 million in mobile-payment volume in 2008 and expect to close out 2010 with more than $700 million.

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Q Do you think mobile payment will change the overall shopping experience?

A In fact, it already has. We saw about a 300 percent increase in sales from mobile devices Thanksgiving weekend. As I was out and about shopping during the Black Friday sales, I saw lots of people scanning bar codes and checking comparative prices on their mobile phones.

I went to Crate & Barrel to buy a set of plates. I had planned to buy them online, but my husband and I couldn't quite decide whether it was the "exact" item we'd seen on a previous shopping trip. When I got into the store I realized the set would be far too heavy to carry back, so I sat down on one of their comfy armchairs and ordered it on my cell phone from their mobile website to be delivered to my home.

Q How will new products like PayPal Local redefine the purchase process?

A PayPal Local is just one example of the intersection between "mobile" and "local." It's great for merchants, who can attract local consumers to come into their stores. For consumers, you can find merchants nearby with great offers, get information about their products and opening hours, and your transaction can just happen. A great example might be holding a garage sale. You could advertise the sale on PayPal Local so your neighbors could all see it, and if one of them happens to be walking their dog past your sale, it's quite likely that they'd have their cell phone, but not their wallet. No worries at all -- they can pay straight from their phone via PayPal to pick up your fabulous old antique sofa!

Q What are the biggest challenges you face in getting users to embrace mobile payment?

A One is just continuing the penetration of smartphones. As our experience has shown, smartphones are making a really big difference in the experience and adoption of mobile payments. Another challenge for mobile payments in general is security concerns -- this is a pretty new format for consumers, so they have some concerns about how secure the devices are. When I enter my credit card, is it stored on the device? The good news with PayPal is that all the information is stored "in the cloud." Nothing is ever stored on your device, so you are safe if it's lost.

Q What do you see as the future of money?

A Money actually hasn't had many significant structural changes over human history. We transitioned from bartering to currency, and from currency to credit, and most recently from physical to electronic. The great thing about "electronic money" is that it enables you to have your wallet in the cloud and access it from any place that's Internet-connected. Will cash go away 100 percent? I don't think so. But I think we'll see more and more times when you won't need to have cash with you.

Contact Patrick May at 408-920-5689.

Laura Chambers

Birthplace: Orbost, Australia

Position: Senior director of PayPal Mobile

Previous jobs: Numerous roles within PayPal, Skype and eBay. Headed PayPal's funding mix product team and was a member of the strategy team, where she developed new product ideas and led several strategy projects for merchant services. At Skype, she ran consumer products. Most recently, as chief of staff at eBay, she developed and shaped executive communications and events and led critical business projects including customer retention and corporate strategy.

Education: Master's degree from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a bachelor's degree in arts/commerce from the University of Melbourne

Family: Lives with her husband, Adam

Residence: San Francisco

5 things aboutlaura chambers

1. Spent her childhood in the Australian outback in the town where "Mad Max" was filmed; had an on-set photo taken with Mel Gibson.

2. Discovered that a childhood playing classical piano and French horn was not good training to be keyboardist in a rock band during graduate school.

3. Just rescued two dogs during a business trip to New York.

4. Backpacked alone through Europe for six months on a budget of about $40 a day.

5. Has been sailing since before she could walk: Races regularly on the bay, and has sailed in Indonesia, Fiji, Australia, Greece and the Caribbean.